Wall Street Journal deputy editor Charles Forelle sent out the following on Friday afternoon:
Hi all,
Today is my last day at The Wall Street Journal.
(That’s a pretty good lede! Declarative sentence, no commas, no “as” or “amid,” nothing underscored or revealed.)
I like to tell stories, and over the years I’ve probably bored hundreds of you with thousands of them. Here’s one more, about the beginning.
Cathy Panagoulias interviewed me for an internship at the Journal. It was in that cramped temp space down near Canal Street, where a chunk of the newsroom had set up after evacuating World Financial Center on a bright September morning 24 years ago. We talked, and Cathy said, “if you get an internship, where would you like to go?.” She laughed. “Not that it really matters,” she said. “We’ll send you where we send you.” I said I grew up in New York and went to school in the northeast and so if I got the chance I’d like to go somewhere further afield.
Sometime later she called and said I’d be an intern in Boston.
I couldn’t have been luckier. Boston circa 2002 was stacked with ace reporters and ruled by the brilliant, fiery Gary Putka. Gary soaked my first leder draft with so much red ink I thought I’d die. But he made a passionate journalist out of this kid, taught him to work hard and press hard and fill his notebooks with all the reporting possible and then go fill some more.
I had already graduated, so I needed a job when my internship was over. I had an offer from another paper, and I told Gary about it. “Don’t take it,” he said. “I’m seeing if we can keep you.” He came back a few days later with the Journal’s offer, which was for a reporting position in Boston—at a salary 17% below the other place.
Gary gave me a good speech: You’ll have a long career here. You’ll have opportunities to do lots of things. “The Journal,” he said, “is where you want to be.”
Gary was right.
It has been an immense privilege to work here. I learned how to report, how to edit and how to lead from giants of the craft—many of whom still grace these halls. When I had a patch of my own, I tried to emulate them and pay it forward. Most importantly, I got to know so many of you. A lot of us laughed together, a few of us cried together. We had a ton of fun.
Every sitcom character needs a catchphrase. For years I tried to make mine “banks create deposits when they make loans,” but it didn’t stick. The one that did, though, is true. I believed it every time I said it, every time I walked into 1211, every time I could see a little glimpse of sky through the slits that pass for windows: It’s a beautiful day for financial journalism.
I will miss you all. Don’t be strangers. Say hi whenever. (DELETED email address and phone number)
With love,
Charles
